


Twelfth Night

by AirgiodSLV



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-11
Updated: 2006-01-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 12:11:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15949088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: He’s ten days into the break and bored out of his mind, and he thinks that if something interesting doesn’t happen soon, he may just go mad.





	Twelfth Night

**Author's Note:**

> For [](https://cupiscent.livejournal.com/profile)[cupiscent](https://cupiscent.livejournal.com/), because I love her and she asked so nicely. Thanks to [](https://ipso--facto.livejournal.com/profile)[ipso__facto](https://ipso--facto.livejournal.com/) and [](https://impasto.livejournal.com/profile)[impasto](https://impasto.livejournal.com/) for editing.

Draco loves the winter holidays…to a degree. They tend to bring excellent food and the obvious expected hoard of gifts, but he’s learned that after a few weeks at the Manor, the excitement begins to pall and he finds himself longing for Hogwarts again, and the security of his House.

He’s ten days into the break and bored out of his mind, and he thinks that if something interesting doesn’t happen soon, he may just go mad.

Distraction comes in the form of Theodore Nott, who has escaped similar familial imprisonment for a day to visit. He comes bearing a sampler of rare potions ingredients tucked under one arm, still half-swaddled in wrapping paper.

After brief negotiations, an exchange is made which is mutually satisfactory to both parties involved, and the potions sampler is traded for an advanced Arithmancy text, given to Draco by a distant relative. Draco has no plans to pursue the subject after his O.W.L.s, and Theodore is…well…Theodore.

“Have you talked to Pansy lately?” Theodore asks as they settle in Draco’s room with a plate of biscuits, and Draco gives him a sideways look. He goes with Pansy because it’s convenient, and because she’s tolerable, but he hadn’t been aware, before this, that Theodore had any interest.

“A few times,” he comments, selecting a biscuit and pausing just before taking a bite. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” Theodore answers, helping himself to the biscuits as well. “I heard she and Queenie Greengrass had a bet on as to who would find a date for the next Yule Ball first.”

Draco snorts. Suspicion dispelled for the moment, he takes a bite of his biscuit. “She’d better not be planning on using me, then,” he says disapprovingly. He won’t be used by anyone, unless he’s getting a cut of the profits. Then it becomes mutually beneficial.

“It wouldn’t matter if she had,” Theodore answers. “Queenie has already snagged someone, so if Pansy hasn’t already asked you, I’d assume she’s lost out.”

“She has?” Draco asks, intrigued enough to cease nibbling his biscuit. It’s hard to imagine Queenie Greengrass with anyone, except maybe…well, Gregory Goyle.

“Mmm,” Theodore affirms, licking crumbs from his fingers. “Blaise has said he’ll take her.”

For a moment, Draco is perfectly still, sure he couldn’t have heard that correctly. Then:

“He’s _what?_ ” Draco explodes, scowling furiously and storming down the stairs before he gets a response, leaving a surprised Theodore in his wake.

Draco sticks his head irritably into the fireplace, barks out, “Zabini!” and withdraws. Mother has taught him never to be the one caught in a compromising situation, and appearing as a disembodied face in a fire is certainly compromising.

Blaise shows up a few minutes later, looking strange in red-orange highlights instead of black shadows, while Draco is tapping his foot impatiently on the floorboards waiting for him to respond.

“You summoned?” Blaise says dryly, and Draco flushes but doesn’t lose his poise.

“I’m bored,” he announces haughtily.

“You’re always bored,” Blaise points out, but Draco is unruffled. He will not be put off by Blaise’s attacks of logic.

“I haven’t seen you all week,” Draco complains. “You’re never around anymore.”

“I’ll come over for tea, then,” Blaise says agreeably. Draco scowls, annoyed at Blaise’s easy agreement when he himself is spoiling for a fight.

“We’re always coming over here,” he protests, not about to be so easily placated. Besides, Theodore is over here, and Draco can’t be bothered explaining to him why he feels the need to take this Queenie Greengrass matter up with Blaise. He isn’t honestly sure yet, himself.

“Fine,” Blaise replies calmly. “You come over here.”

“Fine,” Draco says, drawing himself up haughtily as if he hadn’t been unconsciously angling for that all along. “I will.”

He grabs the floo powder and throws it into the fire immediately, storming into the fireplace so abruptly that he almost steps on Blaise’s tolerantly flaming face. Unfortunately, Blaise knows him well enough to expect such a petty gesture, and retreats from the embers before Draco has a chance to do any damage.

He’s just rising from the antique Persian rug when Draco steps out of the fire. Blaise brushes a speck of dust from Draco’s shoulder and reaches around him to draw a heavy silver-grey curtain across a brass rod hung over the fire.

“Blaise,” Draco inquires politely. “Why is there a curtain over your fireplace?”

“Privacy,” Blaise answers, already heading towards the parlour and leaving Draco to follow in his long-limbed wake. “I got tired of people poking their heads in the fire every time we want to warm up the living room.” He glances back, expression ambiguous and very much Blaise. “Mother receives a lot of unwanted attention.”

Draco is admiring Blaise’s ingenuity before he even thinks to be jealous for not having thought of it first. Thankfully, he’s distracted from both emotions by his curiosity about Blaise’s mansion, which is exotically decorated as Blaise himself never is, recalling more primitive cultures while at the same time maintaining a kind of lofty superiority. Draco decides he approves.

“Sherry?” Blaise asks casually, pouring a glass from a crystal decanter on the sideboard, and Draco hesitates, because as much as he _pretends_ he’s been drinking from his father’s cellar since he was eleven, it’s not…technically…true.

Blaise raises his eyebrow at Draco’s hesitation, and that makes up his mind.

“Love some,” he returns, challenge in the set of his shoulders and the lift of his chin. Blaise turns his head to pour, but Draco sees the smile. Just for that, he drinks half the glass in one swallow.

Draco coughs, unprepared for the sweet-rich fire burning his throat, and Blaise reaches out a hand to steady him, still half-smiling. “Little Lord of the Manor,” he teases. Draco should be offended, but he’s not; partially because it’s Blaise, but mostly because Blaise has a hand cupping his elbow and Draco is…distracted.

Then Blaise ruffles his hair, and Draco’s expression immediately shifts to a scowl. “You’re so easy, Draco,” Blaise says, and Draco huffs but doesn’t argue, because with Blaise, at least, it’s true.

Blaise leads Draco over to the chaise-lounge, and Draco watches him a bit enviously. Blaise moves like a panther confined in a designer sweater and dress slacks. Draco has been imitating him since second year, after feeling like a klutz in comparison while walking with him to classes, and promptly deciding that such a thing simply would not do.

Draco’s gaze slides slightly lower than Blaise’s well-set shoulders, and he yanks it up again. Blaise has an inconveniently keen sense of awareness when it comes to what’s going on around him, in particular his effect on other people. Draco is taking no chances.

“Scones?” Blaise asks diffidently, and Draco realizes that there is somehow a tea set already waiting, steam rising in slow, near-transparent curls from the gleaming silver kettle.

He raises an eyebrow.

“Mother’s given the house elves standing orders,” Blaise explains, already pouring tea with the ease of someone who has been trained by the perfect hostess since birth. “She says it’s better to have a pot of tea go cold than to be caught unprepared when guests arrive.”

Once again, Draco is impressed in spite of himself. He wonders what other fascinating mysteries the Zabini mansion holds. When he inherits the manor, he wants to remember all of this and institute similar policies. It wouldn’t do to offer less hospitality than another pureblood household. He has a reputation to uphold.

They take their teacups and Blaise stretches out his long legs beneath the coffee table, the way Draco has seen him do countless times in class under his desk. It occurs to Draco that they’ll have significantly fewer classes in common after this year, once they move from O.W.L.s to studying for their individual N.E.W.T.s. It’s like a splash of cold water, and he can’t stand the thought of _not_ spending time with Blaise after fifth year ends.

“Are you trying out for the Quidditch team next year?” Draco asks suddenly, and Blaise gives him an assessing look, but doesn’t comment on the abrupt change of topic.

“I don’t think so, no. I’ve never been overly fond of sports,” Blaise remarks, and Draco waves a hand in dismissal, leaning forward eagerly and balancing his saucer on his knees.

“You should. It’s great fun, and the team is getting better all the time. We’re going to win this year, I can feel it.” He watches Blaise, hoping to see an answering glimmer of interest, but is disappointed when Blaise’s dark eyes don’t so much as flicker.

“Not all of us have your burning need to prove themselves, Draco,” Blaise murmurs over the rim of his teacup, and Draco sits back, stung. He knows that Blaise is only goading him – because if there’s one thing above all others that Blaise excels at, it’s in setting people off-balance – but that doesn’t make the comment sit any easier.

“I happen to think Quidditch is an excellent pursuit,” Draco returns haughtily, and drinks his tea with grim determination even though it’s still too hot and burns his tongue.

Blaise smiles ambiguously and sips his tea. Draco’s mind gets stuck on the other pursuit Blaise is rumoured to be involved in, and suddenly he can’t hold the words back anymore.

“Theodore says you’re dating Greengrass,” Draco says abruptly, the words spitting from his mouth in a rush. Blaise raises his eyebrows, and Draco sits back and feigns nonchalance, as if simply waiting for an acceptable explanation.

“I said I’d take her to the next Yule Ball,” Blaise answers mildly, setting his teacup down on its saucer with a soft clink. “I’d hardly call that dating. We may never have one again before we leave school, you know, after what happened with the tournament last year.”

Draco is not at all mollified by this response. “You’re still engaged with her in a contract, which may stand for the next two years,” he argues, vehement and simultaneously annoyed that Blaise is so good at – and seems to take such pleasure in – purposely riling him. “Is that really the wisest move? She could become horribly fat by then, or have been with everyone in our House. You don’t want to bind yourself to _that._ ”

He’s aware that he sounds terribly waspish at the moment, but he can’t help himself. Between the Greengrass news and Blaise’s polite, affected indifference, Draco’s entire day is threatening to be ruined. And Blaise is still acting as if he doesn’t care.

“I’m sure I’ll find a loophole in our binding contract, if that’s the case,” Blaise assures him, and Draco grudgingly admits that Blaise could probably get himself out of a verbal agreement if he found it no longer satisfying. That isn’t the point.

“She’s not good enough for you,” Draco says. _No one is,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t say that aloud. He hasn’t drunk _that_ much sherry, to have his tongue so easily loosened by a careful prompt.

“She’s a pureblood,” Blaise points out, clasping his hands over his knee as if this is a conversation he’s been expecting to have, and he already has his arguments ready to present.

“She has warts,” Draco counters, because everyone knows it for a fact, even if they haven’t actually ever found conclusive evidence.

“She’s rich,” Blaise argues, still casual, as if he finds all of this highly entertaining.

Draco clenches his hands into fists in his lap, digging into his palms with manicured fingernails, and grits his teeth. “She’s still not good enough,” he says stubbornly.

Blaise chuckles. “And you are?” he asks, and Draco’s mouth drops open like a fish. He’s momentarily too stunned to answer, which gives Blaise the time to continue. “Really, Draco, I expected more subtlety of you.”

It takes Draco a second to feign indignation. Thankfully he’s too well-bred to sputter, and puts on an air of cocky arrogance instead.

“Really?” he drawls with a bit too much panic to make it believable, leaning mock-casually against the back of the chaise-lounge, heart in his throat. “What else did you expect?”

Blaise studies him for a moment, then leans in. Draco’s breath stutters, and Blaise pauses barely a hair’s-breadth away, eyes flickering over Draco’s and lips curled half-up.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?” Blaise asks in amusement, and Draco flushes hotly, willing himself furiously not to stammer an excuse, a lie.

He tosses back his hair instead, says loftily, “As a matter of fact…” and then Blaise’s mouth is on his.

It’s very nice, as first kisses go, and Draco is just starting to muse that he could really get used to this when Blaise breaks the kiss. Draco pouts, as much as he can while trying to hide the fact that he’s out of breath, and pretending that his body hasn’t responded to the intimacy…well, rather as one might expect in a situation like this one.

Blaise laughs. Draco growls and kisses him again, impatient and demanding, tasting sherry and excited by the way Blaise yields and allows him control of the kiss.

When Blaise pulls away this time, Draco isn’t the only one affected.

“More,” Draco says. And Blaise obliges.


End file.
